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Thursday, May 19, 2011

Open Beta Release On Hold until next weekRelease 1.5.1.85 maintenance today 4pm PST

Here is Thursday's update - and the aim here is clearly to be crazy-transparent with what we are doing, so for those not that interested in the technical stuff, the short version is; Open Beta is on hold until next week. For Closed Beta users we are going to roll out patch 1.5.1.85 at 4pm PST / 7pm EST / 24:00 GMT / 01:00 CEST today

For the longer version continue reading below;

The Closed Beta issue we have run in to causes the disconnection of all players on a server. Unfortunately it happens to be of those vexing problems that only shows up at full production load, and an issue that leaves almost no traces of its origin in our logs. During QA and testing loads the issue doesn't materialize (throw 50 people on a server and everything seems just fine), even with large static loads and testing the game from multiple locations.

Specifically the issue manifests itself where districts with 60-100 players suddenly lose IPC (inter-process communication) functionality which then leads to the district dropping all players and the district crashing. This happens anywhere from 1-6 hours from the district starting up. Normally this would be easily grabbed by our crash processor and it's usually a pretty straight forward to identify the location of any GPF, however with this particular issue, the logs don't show anything that helps narrow down the scope other than it's part of the changes for Open Beta.

Rolling back several versions is certainly not the preferred option as it puts us firmly back into Closed Beta, but could be done (it would take us back to somewhere in the 1.5.0.7x range), so instead we are making one last push to get through the current issue with the production load, and we continue to ask our Closed Beta testers to help hammer the servers over the weekend so we can reevaluate where we are on Monday.

Today we are also pushing ahead with release of 1.5.1.85 which further adds information to what is happening, fixes an unrelated client-side GPF that happened when a song changed tracks (a general Audio GPF), and potentially MIGHT solve the district disconnect issue (but again, won't be visible until it's on full production load for a few hours).

Once we enter Open Beta, the patching schedule becomes very different (and slower). We will also at that point recruit our first "Test Monkey Crew" for APB - basically volunteers who will get early access to builds in return for running live tests on a public test world, specifically designed to catch these types of hard-to-QA issues. The TMC gets various in-game benefits for being early testers. But again - that system goes in to place after Open Beta goes live and Closed Beta has ended.

I will continue updating this blog daily until the the game is in formal Open Beta. Also while this is being worked on, be mindful that very few of our tech staff will be active on the boards or blogs, since this is pretty much an all-consuming issue for everyone.

Matchmaking is worser than before, very long waiting time or missions with very unfair teams like 2x Gold 2x Silver vs 1 Silver and 3 Brongze

Spawnsystem spawns u over 200 meters away from ur Object or Teammates

Ranking System looks to much of the winning or losing of the mission --> K/D takes no place here though 15/6 stas vs 6/15 stats Mission lost by timeluck get killd in a hold place mission in the last 25 seconds

U will fall down in ur ranking but the enemy will rise it :(

Missions:

VIP Take outs 8 in 7 mins or 5 in 4 minsTo much Camping or unfair spots who could deff to easy

here is lot to do Bjorn befor go out with open Beta!I hope u realise that

i break up with my girlfreind because i tell her darling i dont have much time for you(18may)now is 20 in greecei need her back BECAUSE APB NO comming out YET!!!!!!!!!!JESUS CRIST!!!I TELL THAT TO HER SHE START CRYING AND I TELL HER I HAVE 10FREINDS WE NEED GO APB!!

Although i'll be the first to admit all these whining people are annoying (even though i'm not in cb) You do state yourself that the bug only manifests when the server is on high load, i'm assuming that the reason you can't tell if the patch has fixed the issue is because, your not sure if it worked, or has just not hit the point ofcrash yet?Surely there'd be an easy and mutually pleasing way to test if it worked, by putting the servers on very high load by opening it up for everyone?I tried to make this post sound as wingeless as possible as it doesn't bother me waiting a week or more I have other things to do, this was just my personal thoughts. I've got a little experience in your field but my apologies if i'm completely off the mark.

The main thing that has frustrated me recently is lack of communication, but you have just rectified thatc so thank you. Good luck!

@zinonchesssee? that was a classic mistake. never break up with a girl, as long as she's not irritating you or at least irritating you to a level you can withstand ;)now... lesson learned. begone, grasshopper.

on the side note - let's just hope the CBT players won't find any more crucial bugs, right? those who believe - pray or sacrifice a cow or something. those who don't - uggh... think of something ;)

@ BjornCould you also look into the error code 11006 "You are too young to play APB" this thing is annoying and I do understand you got a lot of work at the moment but it seem like many closed beta testers is having this issue./Lundin

Many people here complaining. But they are the most affected. Every day you pass, they lose potential customers and a week is a long time. The lack of respect towards the customers has been very serious. you think that GameFirst failure of its flagship product output. And notice a few hours before, that will leave your product on the date announced. More doubts whether this company will be able to take care of this great project.

@Bjorn"Daily update" as in "Yep, we are still working on it (something something)" lol :P

Wouldn't it be possible to remove the guns that has expired from ones inventory?I find that I only use about 4 different guns,but has tested almost all.. This makes my inventory flooded with "expired gun icons" Very annoying. Just make us able to remove them, like we delete our mails in the inbox.

Another small thing:Since i play almost every day, i would like to hear more about TMC. But another time for that.

Is the crash rate the same between financial and waterfront? If one is significantly greater than the other check to see if any specific mission types are played more frequently in that district. Might just be a rare scenario regarding a mission ending. Say, a tie between two teams that had negative standing?

Seriously, you guys are killing me. I appreciate what you guys are doing here, but please just open it. Its Beta, we will be expecting bugs. Let us test the game, and maybe get more evidence of the bugs, and exactly when they occur to you. I understand you dont want to hurt the reputation of the game, but some people have been waiting for a long time. Please consider this.

If you want to have heavy server loads, leave the game in "closed beta" and open it to everyone. That way both can have it; heavy server loads for testing and game play for people that want to play with or without the issues...... or maybe open the closed beta sign-ups again. I still have a CB email. Just need to sign up.

Nice, it's good to know the G1 team is working on the bug. Just a thought though, send 2k or more closed beta keys at random people if you're having a hard time fixing the issue. From what I see there's a lot of people wanting to play non stop, and that would mean a bigger load on the servers and more crashes for you to dig into. Anywho, I'll be following this through google, my friends and facebook. Can't wait for the OB, APB is a real eye-candy teaser right now :D

I was thinking about your marketing plan for the game. It is far better than the last one but could arguably kill the game sorta.

I was thinking that you should do product placement in the game. Allow players full access to the game such as creation of symbols and themes. Charge for extra character slots (1 time buy). Players should be able to opt 10 of their own created symbols and themes to be sold for 50 G1 credits each one that sells a player will receive 5 or 10 G1 credits from their created item.

Also charge for new maps you add like if you add a new map charge 400 G1 Credits 1 time buy. That is my opinion. 30day crap feels like a money trap.

My Idea will bring the community closer and allow a new formula of marketing strategy unheard and seen of in any game. Also a more stable one.

Is there honestly any way that you could make it so we can at least open the character creator? I just want to see what it's like, I've seen so many reviews. I don't see the point of locking us out of that too, just don't let us join a game until OB, but save our characters and maybe even cars in anticipation of the game.

Doesnt matter what anyone say, if ppl wanna leave let them leave, if they cry in a corner let them cry, and if u need 6 months to open the game to everyone so it have to take 6 months!All this what happens here happens in other f2p games to, no matter what the devs do ppls are still crying but they need to understand that it is more complex to bring up the servers and all the programs and find and fix errors as they think.All the GM`s, Admins, Devs or what ever do you wanna call them do a very hard and nice job and we have to appreciate that!So please let them just do his work, stop cryin and flaming and say THANKS!!!

lol the QQin is epic and great, suck it up its BETA not PERFECT and prolly will never be "perfect" cause every1 has a different idea of "perfect". , my advise QUIT CRYING BITCHES! its a dynamic game and yes theres going to be a time where you spawn too far away or right in front of a fresh spawned enemy, and yeah there's objectives to hole and a timer on that and u can get wiped out in the last 2 seconds and fail BIG WHOOOP, CRY ABOUT IT GIRLY MEN. for every time u get shafted by the system there will be a time u use that same system to shaft the other side, unles syou jsut suck bad, i got spawned in sight of an OBJ today maybe 50m max. killed the idiot trying to cap it and won! then later got spawned 200m on the other side of the bridge area in finance district. did i cry like a bitch about it? noooooooooo i went on playing the best game ever made happily. shrug it off, suck it up, get back to killing and stop bitching in Dchat

You should modify somehow the drop-off zone. A f***ing player just parked her car on the drop-off zone and I couldn't deliver the package. Also I think she were cheating because she killed me with a shotgun in 2 shoots within 1 second and with no missing while she were running. Her name was Kalisha. Ban her.

Wonderful, next week when? What do you call next week? Next week as in wait a week? Next week as in Sat or Sun?

And if you need a high server load to make the bug appear and can't get a large load fast open up the beta, common sense here G1. Or atleast send out more CB keys while we wait. Most of us don't mind playing with bugs, it is what beta is for. For god sake G1 use the beta for what beta is meant to be used for.

And please take the keys away from noobs like Sergeant Tbag, CBT assholes like him have no place in beta because they contribute nothing and only piss people off.

I would like to know more about rating system. What other factors determine rank? Because it seems that it is still based on win loss ratio of matches. Due to this I endup being TL 3 bronze thrown in with about same level dude but he has all good midifiers and weapons. For me then it is a bit too hard to kill him if he has like kevlar and other upgrades even though they have downsides. He kills me quicker than i do because my fire power is not enough or mision is puting him in position where i am forced to go with weapon that can kill him in 1 out of 100 encounters

Anyway, basically the gameplay is good, the missions are organized well. I've experienced a little lagg though, but not a big problem. You're doing a great job G1, and I hope that someday the game will be good enough to play with it.

Thanks G1, I waited for this game for several months, and here it is. :)

@NekerbeekerYou, and all the rest of the twats start reading, this is getting old. G1 said WAY before the OB date announcement that the open beta would be on schedule if nothing gets in the way to slow things down. They specifically said that there is definitely a possibility that the OB will be postponed because of unforeseen glitches/bugs. G1 has been fantastic in respecting their "customers" (it's a free game so that doesn't even apply) and has done even better at keeping us up to date on what's happening.

You people don't realize that this company is bending over backwards to get us the best news about this game AND to let us play it FOR FREE.

The game will be out in a few months and you can all play it to your hearts extent at no cost to yourselves. In the mean time, go read a book or something. For Christ' sake.

@novaimeYeah, I'm really looking forward to the hack bans. On the West Coast server the crims z0h, Churp, TheyCallMePro and the rest of their butt buddies all aimbot as blatantly as can be. z0h and Churp were TL Gold 10 (or TL 30 or whatever) the day of the threat reset.

Still nice to see some progress. I don't care what anyone says about the beta so far. I'm still enjoying it, despite the whacky matchmaking system.

Oh and Bjorn, is there anyway you guys could set boundaries for people that are not part of missions? For example, in one of stages on one of the missions where we have to eliminate the VIP(I'm on the enforcer side),the VIP was down on his last life and was camping on the rooftops. But some criminals that were not part of the mission were blocking the ladders on both sides and we could not get to the enemy VIP at all and we couldn't destroy the vehicles that were blocking the ladders(again, because they were not part of the mission). If you're not able, that's OK. Just got to deal with it, I guess.

@mackat1994I'm not saying don't be pissed. Just don't come here and say that G1 sucks and doesn't know what they're doing when that's not true at all. You people don't realize that most all of the masterminds behind this game originally are on G1's dev team now so they know what they're doing.

Btw, i think the idea of actually going OB now is a great idea considering G1 wants to push the servers to their limits. or a CB key to all that liked you gusis on face would be nice too^^ think im drunk already..! :D

"Why are you guys so mad, it not a big problem, you can come back and play it in a month when it is ready while I play it all I want and tell you about all the fun stuff you missing."

What you don't realize is the 2 soon to be 3 days past the set OB date is longer then most games take to get to OB. G1, take a lesson from Wargaming, the company behind World of Tanks, they had the best beta I have ever seen a game do. Yes, like you they tryed to kill every bug before going into OB, but there CB felt like OB. They never ran out of keys, they never stoped giving out keys. They had other 500K CBT. OB has taken off without a problem. Learn from them.

man this sux iv been waiting two years for them to bring this game back on and was excited to finaly see it playable and to top it off free this time but now i gotta wait a week and then i gotta leave june 7th for job corp lol this blows

Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe this to be the case: G1 is a very very VERY small company when it comes to the gaming industry. Sure, they have a few games out and a few people talk about 'em here and there, but they're not Bungie or Epic. They also don't have as much money as those big name companies.

Here's my thinking: G1 is small and probably isn't doing so hot especially with how the entire world's economy situation is going. Yes, most CBs are very short and usually go to OB in a week or so and most companies would go to OB despite the current server crashes. Consider this though; G1 just nailed a jackpot: APB. If they get this game on it's feet and it actually takes off, G1 could get huge. If, however, things go to the more probable and APB flops again, G1 will probably lose most everything.

Wouldn't you be as careful as possible, taking every precaution if you had a "hit or miss" opportunity that would determine whether or not you get to pay your bills?

@Phailbot good job defending G1. There are some people out there who thinks that they own everything and that everyone owes them everything. They just don't understand how hard working on a game is (I did 2 years of 3D character modelling, and believe me, it's not easy). I would just wish that people overall would be less greedy, but that'll never happen.

I do understand some people's point though, how releasing the OB now would be helpful to get many ppl on the game to help them figuring out the bugs, but it is their game, and they have all the calls.

As a former closed and open beta tester of the original game - and not in the closed beta for this time around, I have to give massive kudos for how much this group communicates with it's players and testers. Before we had no idea if the moderators on the forums even logged on daily. This group shows 110% that they care, and they are trying. Now if only I could get in that closed beta...

ohhhhhhh no now i am dieing slowly with a boring weekend and now i am cry with the hope i may play it later i have been waiting for this 2 years and now i find out it is coming out next week i am a guy who is a waiting person but not right now i am going to rip my heart out if i dont get my medication quick it is called APB Reloded

Sad that OB is being put off for so long im disappointed very much... Gamersfirst with all the hackers and now this.. your really not proving yourself.. sad sad sad im gonna have nothing to doo. This is my favorite game

OFFTOPIC:

IMO we should be able to see when some1 gets banned on the server its should announce it.. Would make more players believe

Please prove yourself GF your a great team but more action needs to be taken against hackers and putting OB off for this long wasn't cool at all.. Im superrrrr sad cuz not Ima have to 4v1 ppl now since the new treat system isn't working right.. I still love you guys i guess

My gut says given the feedback that a lot of CBT testers aside from myself and a few others are providing and its negativity, and considering a lot of gaming news sites etc. mentioned that part of RTWs downfall was that OB got really bad reviews which hurt sales,Open beta can wait.

i can't believe so many people think next week is so long to wait,try months or a year wait like must beta's,that's long, and for any of you that say you have beta tested before you know 1 week wait is super short for beta.

However Bjorn maybe you could do us the courtecy to be punctual in the promise of banning the cheaters?

If they are so few as you say, none is gonna miss them, neither will they influence the weekend's stress test. But even if the number is large, you could give out some more CB invitations (for example 1000 to gamespot, 1000 to ign, 1000 to massively, 1000 to fileplanet etc etc)

I have no problem giving credit where credit is do. Don't get me worng looks great, they did a great job bringing a dead game back to life. Thats the good credit. The bad credit everyone is giving them atm is because of how this OB has been handled. I have said it before and I will say it again. They knew about the bug 48 hours before OB was set to launch and said nothing about it. They wait until late afternoon to tell us that there was a problem. That is why people are pissed and are still pissed. And for CBT guys like you to come in and say "we don't want to play it, its good that they are fixing it, I am going to go play it now while you guys wait" does not help the sitution at all, it just angers people more.

If you want to see what the current best in the F2P game business is take a loke at LoL and WoT, they are the best in the market, they did everything right. G1 is close, but it is not where they are yet. G1 is getting there, but is not yet there.

Yes, G1 is not the biggest company out there, but APB is not only ace they have in the works. Actaully APB is one of 3 aces, actaully the last ace they got of the 3. The 2 aces before APB come in the from of Victory and Taikodom.

One of the best things that happened for G1 happened last year, before they got APB. A great F2P racing game, Project Torque, bit the dust. Many of its players have been looking for a replacement for PT, thats how we found Victory. Victory is our replacement. As soon as Victory hit CB all the old PT guys will be headed for it.

Another great thing for G1 last year, once again before APB. Taikodom wants to go international. They chose G1 to publish the english Taikodom. Taikodom was a popular game before, the only thing that hurt it was it had very few english players, just because most of us saw that they spoke portuguese in the chat. Most of us can't speak portuguese. Very few english players stuck around, but enough of us stayed in so that Taikodom thought it was worth having a second taikodom for the english players. Taikodom should also take off fast, just because it happens to be one of the best game in it catorgory.

So yes, if G1 gets APB worng it will hurt them, but it won't kill them if APB tanks. And I don't think anyone here is going to let APB tank. Or any of G1's new aces.

Would it be possible I was able to have closed beta access? I have been wanting to test this game out for a while, and would love to help discover bugs in a great looking game. I want to use the beta like it's supposed to be used, looking for bugs and glitches, I just can't play right now. Please let us beta test for you guys! Thanks for working so hard guys, I know how little sleep you've gotten over the last few days. We really appreciate it, even if some people don't really show it.

P.S. If you aren't able to give me access, I understand and respect that, and will wait for OB.

G1 you need to expand this game with bigger maps and more car models. This is key to keep APB "reloaded". I hope to see more districts, as a Unity game dev I know with a good team such as yourselves it doesnt take much at all to produce updated content. Thank you for reviving this game and I hope you build upon it properly!

@BjornSomething from a bit different shelf. What are you planning to do about the problems emerging after combining PunkBuster and Realtek audio cards? This is a reason for many crashes or freezes, common also in other games. PunkBuster says that it's not PBs fault (but it affects many games whenever going online, so it is their fault) and Realtek is pretty much not concerned about the issue. So... what now? Because I'm a half-happy owner of a notebook that has this very Realtek manufactured audio card on board. And I'm pretty sure (basing on the popularity of Realtek) that I'm not the only one around.

Ive been in the closed beta since the beginning and might I add that yes there are still a lot of issues. But if you keep the testing going and put more stress on the servers we can rise to the occasion. I have also found many bugs since i have started playing through and through the latest patches and what not. I have played several games and have been in alot of major Beta testing through out them so listen to the many that have experience and have found the issues and we can get APB released as full and not fail once again.

@Andrew yeah 20-25fps isnt all that bad, but it says that you should be abel to run the game with a 2,13ghz dualcore in the minimum system requirements. so then it should at least be possible to get like 30-35fps.

and the fact that i could run the game just fine with my laptop when rtw owned the game, means that it should not be impossible to do it now ;)

but like i said earlier there are more important things they need too take care of first.

i know that alot of people that get in the open beta are gonna get disappointed that they wont be abel to run the game properly.

but unreal engine is one hell of a game engine, so im pretty sure they will be abel to pull it off sooner or later ;)

I playing in closed beta for many other games (the most popular) like Heroes Of Newearth or League of Legends and a similar game like San Andreas MultiPlayer.I know the scripts preety well and I am sure I will help you fix alot. Please activate my beta account if possible ozzie.9001@yahoo.com

I was quite upset untill I saw this anouncement. Now I'm not that bothered anymore. I'm glad that Bjorn has given detailed info about the issue and waiting is not a big deal as long as they keep communicating with us. I still think they could have delayed the launch to next week(or announced the delay) much earlier so people wouldn't have made any plans and kept waiting for the launch.

I hope they also use this time to fix known issues other than this so we have a smoother game to play once the OB kicks in.

matchmaking is still messed up. got put against 5 R100 vs just 2 R39. And I stil think there should be a pureskill server. The mods for someone like me who refuses to buy any are rediculously overpowered and makes it almost impossible to win, even on a 2vs1 match.

Rating is not a factor to determine skill, there are people who have been playing for 3 months who are not as good as some people who have been playing for 1 month, time played (Rating) will never be a factor in threat rating (2 different ratings)

In regards to mods, they are not overpowered lol, not at all, people are refusing to use them because the nerf more than they benefit.

The best part about the comments section in this blog is that I get to laugh at almost everything I read. Based of my observation, I'm going to say that the ratio of kids to adults is about 65|35. I'm also going to add Actual kids to adults who act like kids -- 20|80.

The things I've laughed at:

1)Trolls (for obvious reasons.)2)Players telling the company how it should be run.3)Emotional children who bleed tears about how bad they want to play the game.4)Players who try to make a point as if they knew exactly what was going on within the company.5)Players who are STILL asking for beta keys.6)" так поступаете" bomb threat? I don't think that's english.7)Myself for being the only one to see this blog as a circus loaded with all sorts of retarded people.

I'm not going to state how the game should be, or what it's going to take to keep it running. Nor will I fuss and cry about having to wait another week. The game will be ready when it's ready. To my buddies at G1, Good Job Brahz.

Seriously people G1 aquired APB Intellectual Property Rights in Late 2010 its not even been 6 months and they have already restructured the game. I never expected the game to hit open beta before July. And that was pushing it. The are moving along quite nicely. What you need to do is get over the idea that you are owed anything then you will stop bitching. guess what they could just cut there losses and close it back down. So STFU and go make a Bird House.

Noot Cool,this is why GamersFirst will never reachPopularity of aeriagames or perfectworld Those two companies keep their promises and have huge player bases in each and one of their games....I am very disappointed.....

Perfect world ShadowHaha? Really? thats the company you wanna do comparisons with? They got people complaining on a daily basis and everyone has to start somewhere. And PWI keeps their promises actually NO they don't they botched the release of the Forsaken World closed and open beta. That is an example of what NOT to do. No two companies are exactly a like G1 doesn't have the same man power as PWI or Aria. Every and I do mean EVERY company has its issues. I swear there are so many cry babies on here.

Shadow, you're the little kid who'd be crying that you're crashing every few hours and say that they shouldn't have to released it. You just can never be happy and I pray that you won't stick around long enough in the community that I'd have to meet you.

Yes, PWI and Aeria were bad choices to compare G1 to, but give the guy a break, he does have a good point. Take a look a ROIT and Wargaming. 2 new game companys. Both with only one game, both have games that are problem free. Both have done everything right. G1 is trying to get right, but is not there yet.

And yet no defending G1 has even bothered to think what about the known bug list? Why did they not just start OB with it on the known bug list? Would it had been that hard? If people didn't like the DCs they could wait until it was fixed, it would not be like they had not been warned of bug. Why did they not just do that, there are pently of things on the known bug list that are just as bad as the DCs, some are worse. And yet OB will start before those bugs are taken care of.

We need and information update, What is happening with that issues? Is the patch working? that repair the DCs? Anything...

I, personally, know i cant play APB until next week, but well, i want to know the situation right now, because is very important the communication by the Gamersfirst part, (Knowing the fact that they are resolving the issue).

for real, your going to compare company's that you say only have one game, then that's their only focus, all man power will go into one game.

the last open beta i was in was delay just like APB, yes we understand your upset it got delayed, i have been in your shoes may times,key words "Many Times" and yes you do get upset when you think it's going to start on said date, but you need to remember that a lot of company's will just say (we have a problem and we will update you as soon as we can) and then after weeks or months they finally reply with a new date, and then delay that one to.

G1 let you know about the delay as soon as they saw that it was not a easy fix, and so far they have been fast to fix bugs. just let them do their jobs, you will get a better game for it.

for your question about the known bug list, the district crash is more then a little bug, read OP, when the district crashes everyone in that district gets kicked and some say they have got stuck(character locked to district) then you can't join it a again, what good would the open beta be if people can't play

Yeey monday open beta, more noobs and moaners in.Can't wait -.-."There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."People will ruin APB:R you will see, because the newbies will whine about OP weapons and snipers and the OCA.I think the only way to prevent moaners is to have weapons with no upgrades.

@PhosgeneI'd actually like a district with no-upgraded weapons. That's just because most of the battles with no-upgrades or the same tier upgrade I'm having are the most balanced ones (both sides had an equal opportunity to win). No one can say it's fair to do battle against a three slotted weapon with tier 3 upgrades when the gun you are wielding has 1 tier 1 upgrade. No amount of teamwork will compensate for it as I have seen when they can take 2-3vs1 fights with ease.